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Tag: "predators" at biology news

Agriculture and tropical conservation: rethinking old ideas

...tered around an area," Vandermeer said. Disease or predators may wipe out a particular subpopulation, but migrants from nearby subpopulations come in and establish a new subpopulation. "We now think that most high diversity situations operate this way, with a continual process of local extinction and re-migrat...

Time of day tempers tadpoles' response to predators

... indirectly by sensing chemicals released by their predators into the water," Fraker said. Typically, the tadpoles respond to such cues by swimming down to the bottom, seeking shelter and remaining still. In his experiments, Fraker exposed tadpoles in a tank to the chemical signatures of dragonfly larvae for o...

Mussels evolve quickly to defend against invasive crabs

...o look at populations that had been exposed to the predators for varying lengths of time," says Freeman. "We wa... While this sort of rapid evolutionary response to predators has been exhibited in some other species, all have been vertebrates. The blue mussel, which Freeman ...

Cultural transmission in bats: When listening for dinner, bats learn from their neighbors

...ile numerous examples are known of instances where predators can use so-called "social learning" to learn new visual and olfactory cues associated with prey, this kind of learning of an acoustic cue had not been previously described. The work is reported by Rachel A. Page and Michael J. Ryan of the University ...

Cornell researchers find serious fish virus in Northeast for first time

...tential to alter the freshwater food web with both predators like muskellunge and prey fish like perch and crappie equally at risk. "In a large ecosystem -- we're talking about the lower Great Lakes -- there really is no treatment," said Bowser. "The best management option is to try and contain the spread of...

Seeing the serpent

...nce show that snakes were likely the first serious predators of modern mammals, which evolved about 100 million.... "There's an evolutionary arms race between the predators and prey. Primates get better at spotting and avoiding snakes, so the snakes get better at concealme...

Bt cotton in China fails to reap profit after seven years

...test solutions. These include introducing natural predators to kill the secondary pests, developing Bt cotton that resists the secondary pests or enforcing the planting of refuge areas where broad-spectrum pesticides are used. ...

Stanford snake venom study shows that certain cells may eliminate poison

... said Galli. But Galli called the battle between predators with venom and their prey "a kind of evolutionary arms race." He and Metz suspect that, given the broad range of venoms that have been developed by snakes and other creatures, mast cells probably won't perform as well against every type of venom. "...

Study shows hope for ridding lakes of clawed invader

...and rock bass, says Vander Zanden, are the primary predators of juvenile crayfish, and to some degree sunfish - bluegills and pumpkinseeds - pitch in by eating the smallest crayfish. The Wisconsin DNR, by manipulating the bag and size limits for anglers fishing Sparkling Lake, has helped establish an optimal p...

Value of services performed by insects tops $57 billion in US

...trolled by other insects, calculated the losses if predators or parasites weren't going after their prey. For pollination, they looked at the value of the crops known to be insect pollinated and subtracted the value of those pollinated by domesticated honeybees. For dung burial, they estimated the losses if d...

Vegetables inhibit growth of prostate cancer in mice with human tumors

As long-lived predators at the top of the marine food chain, albatrosses accumulate toxic contaminants such as PCBs, DDT, and mercury in their bodies. A new study has found dramatic differences in contaminant levels between two closely related albatross species that forage ...

Albatross study shows regional differences in ocean contamination

As long-lived predators at the top of the marine food chain, albatrosses accumulate toxic contaminants such as PCBs, DDT, and mercury in their bodies. A new study has found dramatic differences in contaminant levels between two closely related albatross species that forage ...

Poison dart frog mimics gain when birds learn to stay away

...n evolve to look similar, and it hinges on the way predators learn to avoid the toxic, brightly colored amphibi...ng in the Amazonian rainforest gets protected from predators not by mimicking its most poisonous neighbor, but by looking like a frog who's poison packs less pun...

Not just the birds

...ic cascades in marine ecosystems, showing that top predators can indirectly alter plant productivity, with vary...rophic cascades, or have only shown the effects of predators from the top down to lower levels. This study shows an indirect pathway in which a predator affects ...

How marine reserves are giving coral reefs a helping hand

...Exeter,said: "While an increasing number of larger predators is essentially good news we had concerns that this...duce the amount of grazing even afterthe number of predators rises." Peter added, "Diving in the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park was fun because a large number of ...

Newly discovered protein kills anthrax bacteria by exploding their cell walls

...ack. All bacteria, anthrax included, have natural predators called bacteriophage. Just as viruses infect people, bacteriophage infect bacteria, reproduce, and then kill their host cell by bursting out to find their next target. The bacteriophage use special proteins, called lysins, to bore holes in the bacter...

High-tech tags on marine animals yield valuable data for biologists and oceanographers

...ks to serve as ocean sensors, outfitting these top predators with electronic tags that gather detailed reports ...is deploying electronic tags on 23 species of apex predators in the North Pacific Ocean. He is also collaborating with researchers at the Sea Mammal Research Uni...

Invasive species harms native hardwoods by killing soil fungus

...ile many mechanisms -- from the absence of natural predators or parasites to the disruption of long-established interactions among native organisms -- have been proposed to explain the success of invasive species, this new work is the first to show that an invasive plant harms native plants by thwarting the bi...

Mute swan population helps explain longstanding evolutionary question

...ood constraints and an increase in protection from predators may have helped enable the swans to evolve towards a new, larger clutch size. ...

Underdogs in the understory: Study suggests nature favors rarer trees

...uals are the same species, are very susceptible to predators and diseases, and also compete with each other for the same resources. The new study raises questions about whether other ecosystems, from temperate forests to coral reefs, also select for biodiversity. (Photos of Muller-Landau and a tropical fores...

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